There’s no doubt that Disgaea is one of Nippon Ichi Software’s most popular franchises at the moment. With three titles in the main series already out, a few ports to other platforms and now the announced of Disgaea 4, it doesn’t seem that the franchise is leaving anywhere fast.

Back in 2007 Nippon Ichi released a very well done port of the original Disgaea for the Playstation Portable with bonus extras. Now Nippon Ichi is using the same tactic again for Disgaea 2. Disgaea 2 Dark Hero Days is the latest edition to the PSP catalogue and comes with added content and is once again a very well done port to the system.

Disgaea 2 first made its appearance back on the Playstation 2 in 2006. All the content that was in the original release is all here, including the same story. New things that have been added to the PSP port include typical stuff like new weapons, items, magic and a new gameplay move called Magichange(allows a monster on your team to change into a weapon for you to use), which was first introduced in Disgaea 3. The main inclusion for fans of the series is the new story mode featuring Axel, one of the major none playable characters of Disgaea 2. Axel’s story mode is unlocked after you complete the original story of Disgaea 2.

Even if you haven’t played a Disgaea game before, there’s no harm in playing Disgaea 2 first, since the story is more of a standalone with cameo appearances of characters. It does help to play the first game so that you can understand those cameos and how amusing they are, but it’s not a requirement.

The story of Disgaea 2 is set in the world of Veldime where the main character Adell is the only human left. Fifteen years ago a fearful Overlord by the name of Zenon came to Veldime and put a curse on all the population to turn them into demons. For some unknown reason the main character of Disgaea 2, Adell, was the only one who didn’t get transformed. From then on Adell has made it his goal to hunt down Overlord Zenon to defeat him in battle to transform his family and friends back into human form. The journey begins with Adell’s mum trying to summon Overlord Zenon but instead summons his daughter Rozalin, who now has to stay with Adell due to the summoning packed, which is formed when someone is summoned. Adell promises Rozalin to take her back to her dad, so that he can also meet the Overlord and defeat him.

I didn’t think the story and cast were quite as strong as the original Disgaea. Instead of playing someone who is evil like Laharl, you have Adell, who is a human trying to solve the world’s problem and therefore is a hero; it kind of takes away some of the mischievous mishaps that characters from Disgaea 1 and 3 got into, mainly because those characters were showing how fun evil can be.

The story still keeps Nippon Ichi’s comical storytelling trademark. There’s plenty of laughter and the ride is a joyous one, it just isn’t the best they have written compared to their other games. I’ve also noticed a couple of typos in the text while playing through the game. I’m sure the original Disgaea 2 also featured the same typos, so it seems that they just didn’t check over the text and instead just chucked it straight onto the UMD.
Gameplay in the Disgaea series is split into two sections, fighting and the hub world. The less complex is the hub world which is set in Adell’s home town of Holt. The hub world is your gateway to everything possible in Disgaea. It contains places to buy new weapons, armour and general items. There’s a hospital there to heal your injured party members and a portal to take you to your next level to conquer in the storyline.

When you start diving into the other areas like the Item World (randomly generated levels that when passed level up the weapon you jumped into) or the Dark Assembly (a court where you can vote for help from the senators to create new units or gain favours), you instantly know that Nippon Ichi have kept Disgaea 2 just as hardcore as the original was.

If you aren’t exploring the hub world, then you’re battling. Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days improves on the mechanics of the original’s fighting system. The game is a strategy RPG that allows ten units to be placed on a grid base system, usually found in other well known games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem. What makes the Disgaea series so different from those titles though is just how deep Nippon Ichi has made the combat. It would take me ages to describe all the features that you could possibly do in the battle system, so I’m going to just name the main ones that majorly affect how you are going to fight.

Geo Panels are a returning element for Disgaea. It seems that Disgaea 2 puts more emphasis on Geo Panels than what the first game did. Geo Panels influence grids by putting status effects on the colour the Geo Panel is put on. Early on you’ll see things like extra defence, extra attack and other general power ups. As the game progresses you start getting crazy affects like clone, which after the round is done will clone the amount of enemies on that colour and spawn them into battle. Another one is warp, which moves your characters around the level randomly after every turn is finished.

One of the most irritating Geo Panels is block, which stops you crossing the colour and therefore has you finding another way to the point you need to get to. There are some points in the game where there is just too much blocking and it can become a bit of a annoyance. There are plenty of handicaps and advantages to gain from Geo Panels and is one of the features that needs to be mastered to truly progress through the game.

Throwing is another useful mechanic as it allows you to pick up friendly characters to throw allowing them to move further than they movement would normally allow them. It’s also possible to throw enemies as well. If the enemies are Prinnies then prepare for some great Prinny explosion combos since those penguins explode when thrown. It’s even possible to build towers of friendly units and have them move along to travel greater distances.

The depth to this game is just insane. I can easily say it’s the deepest strategy game series ever to grace any system. Items come in plenty of forms and each item can have the same name, but a different rarity, which usually means that the weapon is stronger than a normal version of it. Characters can level up to nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine… yes that’s 9999. If you want to reach that level then you have to pretty much say good bye to your life. It even allows you to reset the character’s level to 1, but keep the skills so that you can start levelling up the character to make them even better in battle.

Magic and special attacks can also level up. As you can see there’s so much to do and plenty of places to gain experience through the item world and repayable story missions, so you should never be stuck for a place to level up, it’s just a matter of if you have the time as Disgaea 2 is a very time demanding game if you want to fully experience everything it has to offer.
What is nice for new people to the series is that if they want to just enjoy the story, then they can by all means. A lot of the gameplay features can barely be touched on and it would still be ok for a new player to play through the story while not using some of the more baffling/complex features.

Even though Nippon have added some good features to the port, it still suffers from some of the minor niggles that affected even the first game in the series. The camera can still only be used to view at an isometric 90 degree angle, with four different views to spin round each time. It’s fine to use at the start of the game but as the levels get fancier and buildings start to be placed down on the maps then they become objects that obscure your view when you are looking for enemies on the map. This results in you having to guess where the enemy could be by moving the square around in that area till the target information appears on the screen to say it has being selected.

If people played the original port of the first Disgaea game on the PSP then they will know that the game looked pretty good when shrunken down from the console brethren. It’s the same for the PSP port of Disgaea 2. The backgrounds are sharp and clear and the sprites don’t look as blocky as they did on Playstation 2 making it overall a better looking game. Nothing has been cut out or removed because of it being on the PSP hardware, that means all animations and videos are still intact.

It also means that the audio is all there too. What’s even better is that you can switch between Japanese or English at any time when you have access to the game’s menu. It’s great that Nippon Ichi has given players the chance to choose which language they prefer to listen to rather than being forced to listen to only one. It’s not that the English voiceover work is bad, most of it is rather good, but some people just like being purists.

Even though the game is a strategy RPG, Disgaea 2 works brilliant for a game on the move. The battles don’t often last that long and if you do get interrupted the PSP’s effective sleep mode makes sure that you’re ready to jump back in once you are unoccupied.

You can look at Disgaea 2 Dark Hero Days from two perspectives. If you’ve never played the series before then there’s no problem for you to pick up Dark Hero Days and have some great fun with it. I would recommend picking up the first game as well because I feel that Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness tells a better story and therefore just feels like a better Disgaea. These extra battle mechanics are nice to have in Disgaea 2, but they don’t really do all that much to push the general gameplay forward and new comers are mostly going to ignore them or feel intimidated by them.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play it, fans might get some kicks out of the extra story mode but it really boils down to if you can put plenty of hours from your life back into a game that you probably already sold your life away once before because you beat it on the Playstation 2. Disgaea 2 will eat up a lot of your hours because of how deep the game becomes, there’s more to it than just beating the story. With a collection database and unlockable side missions, this is a game that can offer hundreds of hours for dedicated people who can’t get enough of the addictive grinding nature of the post story elements of the game.

Simply put, strategy RPG fans need to have a taste of the Disgaea series in which ever form because it’s simply one of the best and most engrossing series the genre has to offer and Disgaea 2 Dark Hero Days continues the same trend.